A variety of electronic communications systems, including electronic email (“email”) systems and instant messaging (IM) systems are well known. In both email and IM systems, individual messages can be forwarded and replied to. However, for both email and IM, responding to portions of a message or forwarding portions of a message is relatively difficult or awkward. Further, for a conversation with several levels (e.g., a conversation that includes multiple messages and responses on different topics or subtopics) it can be difficult to discern the logical context of at least some of the messages in the conversation. Similarly, the logical context of a conversation can get lost if a participant joins the conversation mid-way through.
Instant messaging is sometimes called electronic chat. A popular electronic chat program is, for example, Instant Messenger, a trademark of America Online. Electronic chat is comparable to a telephone conversation in terms of function and structure. There is generally no logical structure to an electronic chat conversation, just a timeline.
As users access electronic messages from a plurality of devices (e.g., laptop, mobile phone, electronic pager, set top box, etc.) it would be helpful to have full access to entire conversations from each of these devices, and to be able to discern the logical context, within a conversation, of each user contribution to the conversation.
Additionally, participants in a conversation often need to upload content from a local client to a remote server. However, when adding content to a conversation or other remotely hosted communication, upload bandwidth is often limited. Thus, it would be helpful for conversation participants to be able to preview content that will be uploaded and to be able to prioritize the uploading of content to the conversation from the local client based on requests from participants to access the content. Additionally it would be helpful to be able to begin downloading content at one client as it is being uploaded to the conversation by another client.